courage and with a never-failing faith in the dignity and value of the work which God has given us to do.

To the more than one hundred leaders in education in the elementary, the secondary, and the higher fields of work who, by their suggestions, have aided me in the preparation of this paper, I wish to make acknowledgment of my indebtedness.

I have intentionally omitted the consideration of the educational literature of the year, as well as the trend of educational matters across the ocean. It was necessary to place some kind of limitation on the scope of the paper.

THE SCHOOL AS SOCIAL CENTER

JOHN DEWEY, HEAD OF DEPARTMENTS OF PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

According to the character of my invitation to speak to you, I shall confine myself to the philosophy of the school as a social center. I accept the invitation with pleasure, but at the same time I do not feel that the philosophical aspect of the matter is the urgent or important one. The pressing thing, the significant thing, is really to make the school at social center; that is a matter of practice, not of theory. Just what to do in order to make the schoolhouse a center of full and adequate social service, to bring it completely into the current of social life—such are the matters I am sure which really deserve the attention of the public and that occupy your own minds.

It is possible, however, and conceivably useful to ask ourselves: What is the meaning of the popular demand in this direction? Why should the community in general, and those particularly interested in education in especial, be so unusually sensitive at just this period to this need? Why should the lack be more felt now than a generation ago? What forces are stirring that awaken such speedy and favorable response to the notion that the school as a place of instruction for children is not performing its full function—that it needs also to operate as a center of life for all ages and classes?

A brief historic retrospect will put before us the background of the present situation. The function of education, since anything which might pass by that name was found among savage tribes, has been social. The particular organ or structure, however, thru which this aim was subserved, and the nature of its adjustment to other social institutions, has varied according to the peculiar condition of the given time. The general principle of evolution, development from the undifferentiated toward the formation of distinct organs on the principle of division of labor, stands out clearly in a survey of educational history. At the outset there was no school as a separate institution. The educative processes were

carried on in the ordinary play of family and community life. As the ends to be reached by education became more numerous and remote, and the means employed more specialized, it was necessary, however, for society to develop a distinct institution. Only in this way could the special needs be adequately attended to. In this way developed the schools carried on by great philosophical organizations of antiquitythe Platonic, Stoic, Epicurean, etc.— then came schools as a phase of the work of the church. Finally, with the increasing separation of church. and state, the latter asserted itself as the proper founder and supporter of educational institutions; and the modern type of public, or at least quasi-public, school developed. There are many who regard the transfer of this educational function from the church to the state as more than a matter for regret-they conceive of it as a move which, if persisted in, will result disastrously to the best and permanent interests of mankind. But I take it we are not called upon today to reckon with this class, large and important as it may be. I assume that practically all here are believers in the principle of state education-even if we should not find it entirely easy to justify our faith on logical or philosophical grounds. The reason for referring to this claiming by the state of the education function is to indicate that it was in continuance of the policy of specialization or division of labor.

With the development of the state has come a certain distinction between state and society. As I use these terms, I mean by State the organization of the resources of community life thru governmental machinery of legislation and administration. I mean by Society the less definite and freer play of the forces of the community which goes in the daily intercourse and contact of men in an endless variety of ways that have nothing to do with politics or government or the state in any institutional sense. Now, the control of education by the state inevitably carried with it a certain segregation of the machinery of both school administration and instruction from the freer, more varied, and more flexible modes of social intercourse. So true is this that for a long time the school was occupied exclusively with but one function, the purveying of intellectual material to a certain number of selected minds. Even when the democratic impulse broke into the isolated department of the school, it did not effect a complete reconstruction, but only the addition of another element. This was preparation for citizenship. The meaning of this phrase, preparation for citizenship, shows precisely what I have in mind by the difference between the school as an isolated thing, related to the state alone, and the school as a thoroly socialized affair in contact at all points with the flow of community life. Citizenship, to most minds, means a distinctly political thing. It is defined in terms of relation to the government, not to society in its broader aspects. To be able to vote intelligently, to take such share as might be in the conduct of public

legislation and administration-that has been the significance of the

term.

Now our community life has suddenly awakened; and in awakening it has found that governmental institutions and affairs represent only a small part of the important purposes and difficult problems of life; and that even that fraction cannot be dealt with adequately except in the light of a wide range of domestic, economic, and scientific considerations quite excluded from the conception of the state, of citizenship. We find that our political problems involve race questions, questions of the assimilation of diverse types of language and custom; we find that most serious political questions grow out of underlying industrial and commercial changes and adjustments; we find that most of our pressing political problems cannot be solved by special measures of legislation or executive activity, but only by the promotion of common sympathies and a common understanding. We find, moreover, that the solution of the difficulties must go back to a more adequate scientific comprehension of the actual facts and relations involved. The isolation between state and society, between the government and the institutions of family, business life, etc., is breaking down. We realize the thin and artificial character of the separation. We begin to see that we are dealing with a compli cated interaction of varied and vital forces, only a few of which can be pigeonholed as governmental. The content of the term citizenship is broadening; it is coming to mean all the relationships of all sorts that are involved in membership in a community.

This of itself would tend to develop a sense of something absent in the existing type of education, something defective in the service rendered by the school. Change the image of what constitutes citizenship. and you change the image of what is the purpose of the school. Change this, and you change the picture of what the school should be doing and of how it should be doing it. The feeling that the school is not doing all that it should do in simply giving instruction during the day to a certain number of children of different ages, the demand that it shall assume a wider scope of activities having an educative effect upon the adult members of the community has its basis just here: We are feeling everywhere the organic unity of the different modes of social life, and consequently demand that the school shall be related more widely, shall receive from more quarters, and shall give in more directions.

As I have already intimated, the older idea of the school was that its primary concern was with the inculcation of certain facts and truths from the intellectual point of view, and the acquisition of certain forms of skill. When the school became public or common, this notion was broadened to include whatever would make the citizen a more capable and righteous voter and legislator; but it was still thought that this end would be reached along the line of intellectual instruction. To teach

children the constitution of the United States, the nature and working of various parts of governmental machinery, from the nation thru the state and the county down to the township and the school district, to teach such things was thought to prepare the pupil for citizenship. And so some fifteen or twenty years ago, when the feeling arose that the schools were not doing all that they should be doing for our life as a whole, this consciousness expressed itself in a demand for a more thoro and extensive teaching of civics. To my mind the demand for the school as a social center bears the same ratio to the situation which confronts us today, as the movement for civics bore to the conditions of half a generation ago. We have awakened to deeper aspects of the question; we have seen that the machinery, of governmental life is after all but a machinery, and depends for its rightness and efficiency upon underlying social and industrial causes. We have lost a good deal of our faith in the efficacy of purely intellectual instruction.

Some four specific developments may be mentioned as having a bearing upon the question of the school as a social center. The first of these is the much increased efficiency and ease of all the agencies that have to do with bringing people into contact with one another. Recent inventions have so multiplied and cheapened the means of transportation, and of the circulation of ideas and news thru books, magazines, and papers that it is no longer physically possible for one nationality, race, class, or sect to be kept apart from others, impervious to their wishes and beliefs. Cheap and rapid long-distance transportation has made America a meeting-place for all the peoples and tongues of the world. The centralization of industry has forced members of classes into the closest association with, and dependence upon, each other. Bigotry, intolerance, or even an unswerving faith in the superiority of one's own religious and political creed are much shaken when individuals are brought face to face with each other, or have the ideas of others continuously and forcibly placed before them. The congestion of our city life is only one aspect of the bringing of people together which modern inventions have induced.

That many dangers result from sudden dislocations of people from the surroundings-physical, industrial, and intellectual--to which they have become adapted; that great instability may accompany this sudden massing of heterogeneous peoples, goes without saying. On the other hand, these very agencies present instrumentalities of which advantage may be taken. The best as well as the worst of modern newspapers is a product. The organized public library with its facilities for reaching all classes of people is an effect. The popular assembly and lyceum is another. No educational system can be regarded as complete until it adopts into itself the various ways in which social and intellectual intercourse may be promoted; and employs them systematically, not only to

counteract dangers which these same agencies are bringing with them, but so as to make them positive causes in raising the whole level of life.

Both the demand and the opportunity are increased in our large cities by the commingling of classes and races. It is said that one ward in the city of Chicago has forty different languages represented in it. It is a wellknown fact that some of the largest Irish, German, and Bohemian cities in the world are located in America, not in their own countries. The power of the public schools to assimilate different races to our own institutions, thru the education given to the younger generation, is doubtless one of the most remarkable exhibitions of vitality that the world has ever seen. But, after all, it leaves the older generation still untouched; and the assimilation of the younger can hardly be complete or certain as long as the homes of the parents remain comparatively unaffected. Indeed, wise observers in both New York and Chicago have recently sounded a note of alarm. They have called attention to the fact that in some respects the children are too rapidly, I will not say Americanized, but too rapidly de-nationalized. They lose the positive and conservative value of their own native traditions, their own native music, art, and literature. They do not get complete initiation into the customs of their new country, and so are frequently left floating and unstable between the two. They even learn to despise the dress, bearing, habits, language, and beliefs of their parents many of which have more substance and worth than the superficial putting-on of the newly adopted habits. If I understand aright, one of the chief motives in the development of the new labor museum at Hull House has been to show the younger generation something of the skill and art and historic meaning in the industrial habits of the older generations modes of spinning, weaving, metal working, etc., discarded in this country because there was no place for them in our industrial system. Many a child has awakened to an appreciation of admirable qualities hitherto unknown in his father or mother for whom he had begun to entertain a contempt. Many an association of local history and past national glory has been awakened to quicken and enrich the life of the family.

In the second place, along with the increasing intercourse and interaction, with all its dangers and opportunities, there has come a relaxation of the bonds of social discipline and control. I suppose none of us would be willing to believe that the movement away from dogmatism and fixed authority was anything but a movement in the right direction. But no one can view the loosening of the power of the older religious and social authorities, without deep concern. We may feel sure that in time independent judgment, with the individual freedom and responsibility that go with it, will more than make good the temporary losses. But meantime there is a temporary loss. Parental authority has much less influence in controlling the conduct of children. Reverence seems to decay on every